Halo Fanon:Guide to Fanon and Fanfiction
Writing is more than just a means by which humans are able to communicate facts. It is an art, allowing us to not just communicate opinions, ideas and emotions, but to express them. When William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, he was creating as piece of art every bit as sophisticated as Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, or Frédéric Chopin's Prelude No. 15 in D-flat - writing has the power to move us beyond mere words. It is therefore important that a writer DOES IT RIGHT. Fanon is the creation is supplementary canon separate from the official sources. This isn't the same as fanfiction - fan-written stories based on the canon. It is an attempt at adding to the world of Halo in ways that Bungie or 343 Industries cannot - it is our own ideas and creations, written by fans for fans. For some, it is a vent for creativity, allowing a writer to use a pre-existing universe and set of conventions, places, characters, and so on to set their stories in. But for the most part, much Fanon ends up as poorly written wastes of space on the server, with no creativity and skill put into it. I intend to remedy that. =Conduct= In sociology, manners are the unenforced standards of conduct which show the actor that you are proper, polite, and refined. They are like laws in that they codify or set a standard for human behavior, but they are unlike laws in that there is no formal system for punishing transgressions, other than social disapproval. They are a kind of norm. What is considered "mannerly" is highly susceptible to change with time, geographical location, social stratum, occasion, and other factors. That manners matter is evidenced by the fact that large books have been written on the subject, advice columns frequently deal with questions of mannerly behavior, and that schools have existed for the sole purpose of teaching manners. A lady is a term frequently used for a woman who follows proper manners; the term gentleman is used as a male counterpart; though these terms are also often used for members of a particular social class., Now you may be asking yourself: "What does this have to do with me?" Well, here are some important rules that, while you are under no obligation to follow, are a helpful guide: #'KEEP IT CLEAN': As our resident lyrical wordsmith highlights, disagreements are inevitable on a fanon site, with such a wide array of styles and opinions. When they do arise, please try to keep the discussions of the subject civil; rather than reduce yourself to yelling obscenities at someone you can't agree with, agree to disagree and move on. If they're the initiators, take the high ground - responding in kind risks spilling out onto talk pages for articles and even other users, attracting the attention of the Admins, and earning you a ban. Remember, you're playing in THEIR sandbox - if you can't play nice, why should they? #'RESPECT PUBLIC PROPERTY': Members are generally proud of their articles, and do not take too kindly to others' editing of them without permission, especially with changes to content and events. Even for minor edits, such as spelling/grammar revision, try to leave at least a small message on the talk page for the article, or consult with the creator on their user talk page, just as a polite notification. In some cases, even these well-meaning edits may be misplaced - some things, such as the names for characters, ships or planets, may not be misspellings at all. #'CRIME DOESN'T PAY': Likewise, intentional vandalism will not be tolerated. Infractions should be reported to an admin immediately, and appropriate measures will be taken to remove the accused vandal. It doesn't matter if the article being vandalised is your own or someone else's - remember, GOOD CITIZENS DO THEIR PART. =Editing= Content I'd like to say that the only limit to your creations is your imagination, and from a certain point of view this is true. Your imagination can be a limit to creativity - if you don't have any. But it is certainly not the only factor that needs to be taken into account. You need to decide what you're putting into your article, what type of article it is, and you need to polish it up. Halo Fanon members are very picky critics, and will mercilessly shred you to pieces for abusing the English language, or abusing the Halo universe - justifiable, might I add. There are some mistakes that most new members make, both minor and major, that need redressing; Property Please respect other people's intellectual property. If you wish to edit a users article, or series of articles, seek their permission first by contacting them on their talk page. From their, your request can be approved or denied, but if the user denies you permission, you will respect their wishes. Likewise, other users do not have the right to edit your articles beyond placing appropriate templates on them. Likewise, if you intend to use material created by another user, make sure to ask their permission first. The creator may grant or deny you permission, but you cannot simply decide that its part of your canon. Similarly, don't edit their articles without their permission, regardless of what reasons you have for it - what may look like small errors may be intentional, and it is not for you to decide that it isn't. If you'd like to edit this page, just ask for permission, outlining what you think needs doing and how. I'll probably say no, because this is a piece that I'd like to be solely mine, but I'll take your criticism into consideration when I next get around to editing it. Type Your creativity has been unbridled; your imagination is running wild; it will have outlet, brave and not so brave. So now, you must decide - will your creation be fanfiction, or fanon? You would be forgiven for mistaking the two terms, but there are some major and fundamental differences between fanon and fanfiction' - it helps to learn what these are, and how to decide which you want to pursue. Both vary in length and quality - length is not always a problem, but quality is, and is part of the reason why I created this guide (besides also being an excuse to be snarky and litter it with internet memes. I DUN GOOF'D!) Fan''on'' Fanon, Wikipedia tells me, is a silk vestment with red and gold stripes worn by the Pope. I'm sure we all know the word, though, in the context of fiction, and here it means fan-created extensions of official canon - the places, characters and events that we create lovingly craft on this site, detailing the products of our imagination. Does our stuff have to be be compatible with official canon? No. That's where the "fan" part of the word comes in. We know that our work is not official, and probably will never be. We find this liberating - we aren't restricted by canon in the same ways that 343i or Bungie are. We can create alternate universes, delve into the past, or create our own set of canon, introducing elements that rival those of the official canon in scale, depth and scope. It's liberating. As a mostly fanon writer, this guide will deal with how to make fanon articles that are awesome. Fan''fiction'' Fanfiction, on the other hand, is the name we give to the stories produced by members of the fandom. Like fanon, these aren't official. Like fanon, the may create events, people and places that don't exist in the games, novels or other official media. But the difference is that fan''fiction'' is actual fiction - written tales, rather than just a list of starships or colonies. They have protagonists and antagonists, a storyline that they follow, perspectives, and emotional involvement. Fanfiction tells a story, rather than just describing one. There's a collection of fanfiction here, and Halo-specific fanfiction hosted by HBO. Quality Respecting Canon I can already hear you, dear reader, ask "Respecting Canon? I thought this was fanon?" Its a common mistake, and it is easy to see why. But respect is not the same thing as adherence to - you can respect the Halo canon while diverging from it quite significantly. And this is a good thing. Hierarchy of Canon article. This is no exaggeration.]] Keeping track of an Expanded Universe gets more difficult the larger it gets. Just ask the Star Wars community - six feature films, hundreds of books and novels, dozens of games, and several TV series (not to mention the Holiday Special) to keep track of, with characters, dates, places and factions all interacting, contradicting, supplementing, etc. Obviously Halo isn't as large as the Star Wars EU, but it's still respectable in its own right - six games, five novels, a few comic series and a graphic novel, I Love Bees, and some live action trailers. We also haven't had more than thirty years to expand our universe - getting what we have between 2001 and 2010 is not half bad though! Microsoft may not be keen to see Halo go anywhere any time soon, but it's certainly not whoring it out like some are claiming. Keeping track of even this comparitively paltry amount is still a formidible task - we need to sort out just whose word is a better authority on the subject of Halo, what elements are contradictions and which are merely artistic license, which are retcons, and which are mistakes on the part of the community. Considering that we have so many authors involved in the novels, writers working on the films and animated features, and developers working on the games, not to mention the recent transition of Halo as Intellectual Property from the hands of Bungie to 343 Industries, this process gets complicated easily. Halopedia maintains its own canon policy, as does Halo Fanon, but I disagree on some points. This isn't an official canon policy. Its a combination of what I think it should be, and what seems to me to be common sense. First of all, we need to establish a core - a set of titles that form the basis of the canon that forms a set of canon. For Star Wars, it is the original and recent film tilogies. For Halo, this core is formed by the Halo games themselves: Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Wars, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, and whatever 343 Industries is cooking up for us in the future. But this gets further complicated because one of these games, Halo Wars, was not developed by the creators of the series - Ensemble Studios, the award winning developers of the Age of Empires series, handled that process. Halo Wars gets trumped by some elements of canon because there are contradictions against what was already established - using rechargable energy shields for Spartan units a decade before they entered service, for example; a Covenant "destroyer" almost twice as long as a Covenant Cruiser; the fact that Red Team isn't taken into account in the Spartan roster in The Fall of Reach; aesthetic details, such as the Elites and Spartan armour. These are just a list of minor items - they don't detract from the fact that Halo Wars was a well-made and enjoyable game, if a bit short for my liking. But because these elements are contradicted, it means that some of them are non-canon - Spartans did not have shields before the Mark V. Others, however, may not be quite so easy to dismiss - the material that has come out of 343i had made it abundantly clear that the Halo Wars visual version of the Mark IV armour has been adopted as an official variant of the Mark IV series - whether it represents the original baseline variant, or a specialised version worn only by a select few, remains unclear. Likewise, the Spartan roster has become a tangled and confusing mess given how many Spartans seem to have died over the years, compared to the "three" mentioned in The Fall of Reach. The reissue of the novel doesn't seem to have cleared that mess up yet, but I have my theories. This does mean, however, that we need to find a tiered system by which we can organise the "legitimacy" of Canon for when they conflict - when Bungie says something, and when 343i says something, who are we supposed to believe? Bungie are legendary, and created the series, but 343i are the current guardians of the story bible and are taking over the development of Halo after Halo: Reach - who trumps whom? # Alpha - products by 343 Industries, statements by their employees, and products authorised and approved by them. # Beta - products by Bungie Studios, statements by their employees while they held the IP, and products authorised and approved by them. # Gamma - products by third-party authors, illustrators and developers. Since 343i holds the property now, then their word is law. Regardless of whether people agree with that fact, 343i are the people in charge of what direction the Halo universe goes in, and hold all the cards - we just need to hope that they deal us a decent hand. This raises want to punch a baby". Since this is him, I cringe a little whenever we pass a school. God save us all from his unbridled rage if 343i decide to show the Chief's face.">'some worrying issues' regarding some of the episodes of Halo Legends that recieved a, shall we say, less than warm welcome from the fanbase - or, at least, it would if 343i hadn't already handled that situation by declaring that the visuals from most of the shorts are non-canon - the stories and events are canon, but not how the characters, places or items look. I liked the ideas behind shorts like The Babysitter, or Duel, but some aesthetic and storytelling elements just clashed with my hope for a good story and expectation of crap. The two-part Origins, on the other hand, was dealt with masterfully, even if they couldn't get Jen Taylor to reprise her role as Cortana, and dealt with it's own canonicity in an intriguing manner, leading the viewer to question whether everything states was true or a figment of Cortana's borderline rampant programming - as was the totally non-canon Odd One Out, which satirised Halo conventions, pop culture, and even anime tropes in a hilarious sequence featuring Spartan-1337, a tyrannosaurus, a pair of martial artists and a genetically engineered Brute who could SHOOP DA WOOP. But the point is that contradictions don't exist for Halo Legends - there is no assertion of legitimacy here, and where it conflicts with established canon, previous sources overrule it regardless of 343i's involvement. Bungie, as the creators of Halo and masters of their craft, will always be respected by the Halo fanbase. Many of them were there at the beginning, during the days of Myth, Oni and Marathon, which most Halo fans wouldn't even know exist, and each of which was pioneering and excellent in their own right. Their original trilogy are treated as "hardcore" canon in that they are the standard we base all subsequent expansions of the story on - if it doesn't fit with the games, then it just doesn't fit at all. Employees themselves have served as sources of canon as well - interviews with Joseph Staten, Robert McLees and Frank O'Conner (before his switch to 343i) have introduced elements that the games and novels have not - the possibility that Jackals were employed, rather than loyal members of the Covenant; the possibly (humourously) gay relationship between Wallace Fujikawa and Tobias Shaw; and the fact that Microsoft was the one who stated the number of UNSC colonies, and not Bungie. With Bungie handing over the reigns, though, their words, while sweet elixor to our story-parched throats, are no longer as satiating as they once were. Joseph Staten, for example, claims in Contact Harvest that the UNSC only has seventeen colonies in total. We know, from Eric Nylund's series and a variety of other sources, that there are MUCH more than seventeen inhabited star systems, much less colonies - in this case, it is the word of a Bungie employee that is rendered non-canon, or at least modified - I would take it to mean Inner Colonies - seventeen core worlds, and the rest of the eight hundred being smaller Outer Colonies. Conversely, Nylund states that Harvest was the furthest human colony - systems like Sigma Octanus, Procyon and 23 Librae beg to differ. Staten allows us some leeway - Harvest was the furthest when it was founded in 2468. Presumably, further colonies were founded since then - we could even argue that Harvest was the furthest Inner Colony. By combining two contradictory sources, we get a reasonable explanation for the territory the UNSC controls, and the differing values given. Third Parties don't just include Ensemble Studios - they also include Eric Nylund, William C. Deitz, Greg Bear, Karen Traviss, and the other authors who have (or will) bring the novels that provide us with the vast majority of backstory. It also includes the writers, illustrators and developers of other projects as well, such as the comic series' that have been produced, the brilliant I Love Bees alternate reality game that preceded Halo 2, and the live action films. Sometimes, these sources of canon are groundbreaking - ILB introduced the idea of Spartans trained after the Master Chief, perhaps inspiring Nylunds SPARTAN-III Program, while Deitz's The Flood gave us our first look at the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers and showed us the Covenant side of the story before even Halo 2. Likewise, other elements may not be recieved so well - Deitz's characterisation of the Master Chief as a gung-ho space marine overshadowed his fantastic depiction of Marines and Covenant. There have also been contradictions between third party sources, even between the same author - Nylund gives us conflicting numbers of Spartans who existed in total, and who survived up to 2552, and even though these numbers have been altered by later events (the deaths of so many Spartans in Legends, just as an example), these haven't been cleared up even by the reissuing of The Fall of Reach recently with new material and supposedly with fixed mistakes. The depiction of the Shield World in Halo Wars also conflicts with that of Ghosts of Onyx - rather than a planet hiding a portal to another location entirely, the planet is a shell with a hollow interior - it produces a similar effect, but the results are strikingly different in scale and implementation. In cases like these, we try to reconcile them - the two Shield Worlds may be different types, for example. But when these facts can't be reconciles, then we need to prioritize - the numbers given for how many Spartan-II's were on Reach may be totally non-canon, left behind by the progress of the IP beyond the original vision of it. Aesthetic elements are especially susceptible to contradictions - the different designs for the Scarabs in the Halo Graphic Novel, depictions of the MJOLNIR Mark IV, Marine combat armour, and the hulking behemoths that the Elites became in Halo Wars are all artistic elements that have raised issues - the Mark IV probably had different variants, and the Marines may have upgraded to a more advanced set of armour; the Scarab, on the other hand, is purely artistic license, as are the bulky Elites. Common sense needs to be applied, and the hierarchy is not a strict one - the Contact Harvest example being a case in point. There is an old saying: an unbending tree snaps in the wind. The Halo community needs to remain flexible to variation and accepting of new introductions to the Canon - respect for Bungie may be a fine thing, but we can't simply accept only their word on what is and is not "official". Nor should we rely totally on 343i - the difficulties they've had with the Halo Encyclopedia and The Fall of Reach show us that they are still finding their footing, and are fallible to errors and mistakes. Use your own judgement - if something strikes you as off, then try to accomodate it. If you can't accomodate it, ignore it. If you can't ignore it, they it's way above your paygrade, and is giving headaches to people placed in much worse situations than you. Be thankful for that. And, of course, since this is Halo Fanon, if worst comes to worst you can simply create an alternate history where what you want did or did not happen - a world where Reach did not fall, a world where there are thousands of Spartans, a world where the UNSC defeated the Covenant. The possibilities are endless - I just ask that you respect the canon that which precedes it. Handing Over The Reigns A special word on the post-Halo Reach nature of Halo: A lot of people like to compare Halo to a 'cash cow", and claim that Microsoft is milking it for all it's worth, but the thing about cows is that they're meant to be milked! Trust me, I like in a dairy industry town, I know. If Microsoft didn't "milk" its "cow", they why bother keeping it? It also forces Microsoft into an untenable position - if they do anything with the IP they'll be accused of "milking" it, and by our inaccurate standards this will be correct. A better (and more colourful) analogy is a volcano. For the purposes of this analogy, let us say Halo is a magical volcano, gushing forth hot, molten magical goodness that is future games, books, films, etc. Now Microsoft could just blow the volcano up to extract all the magical magma within, but why should they? It comes out on its own, and it keeps coming out. So they just have to be careful with how the extract the magic. The analogy may not make much sense, or be particularly serious, or may sound like Michael Bay at his worst, but it is accurate - Halo is just the gift that keeps on giving, and if Microsoft start overdoing it then fans will be smart enough to realise what's happening. They know this, and they know what not to do. So they won't do it. I'm not saying trust them, because corporations have been the downfall of so many good things. Like the Gulf of Mexico, for instance. I'm saying that the specific thing that we're worried about is not a concern. Halo is a magical volcano Laws of Physics The laws of physics are not unbending. It would be arrogant, and probably totally wrong, to say that everything there is to know about science is already known. Future discoveries may render what we know today as "fact" a laughable belief. We once thought that dinosaurs were cold blooded brutes that dragged their tails on the ground and were too stupid to survive their mammalian replacement. Now we know that it was the greatest cosmic accident of all history that saw the greatest animal lineage to walk the Earth die out, and that it was a narrow thing. Likewise, respected scientists once thought that there were water canals on Mars, evidence of extraterrestrial life. Today we know that these are natural formations formed either by geological forces or past evidence of flowing bodies of water that no longer exist. We know todat that FTL is impossible, Directed Energy Weapons are impractical, and that shields do not work the way science fiction authors and fans would like. What will we know tomorrow? But likewise, there is a certain extent to which our understanding of physics can be bent. Faster-than-light travel violates E=MC2, and we are able to circumvent this rule because otherwise science fiction would be a boring place. In terms of Halo fiction, ships enter a different dimension altogether, where there is no such restriction, and faster-than-light velocities are possible before they drop back out. Other series use similar concepts, like hyperspace; some use point-to-point worm hole generators in the universe to create tunnels to other star systems; still more simply try their best to pretend it simply doesn't exist. But the point is that these are done for narrative effect, and are taken into account, and are a big deal. This is acceptable. What is NOT acceptable is stuff that is genuinely impossible, and sometimes downright ludicrous. Psionics aka biotics aka Jedi are able to use their minds to accomplish impossible feats - while you can mutter all you want about midi-chlorians or mass effect fields, the fact is that it amounts to magic, and automatically makes the character a wizard. You've strayed from science fiction into fantasy, my friend, and from there it's only a matter of time before crossbows and swords start looking like a good idea, even if they do fire plasma or are made of solidified photons. From there, you'll start giving your characters blue fur and tails, or pointed ears, and once you've passed the Spock Limit there's no hope for you, I'm afraid. That isn't to say that your fanon is bad - fantasy itself is a deep and mythological genre. But if it isn't even science fiction, then it really doesn't belong on Halo Fanon. Science is not an absolute. There will likely never be a point where humanity can say, "there is nothing left to be known. The universe is what it is, we can do anything we want." If that day comes, they it will be tantamount to a declaration of deityhood, and I pity the poor souls who inhabit our Garden of Eden. This means that there are discoveries to be made in the future, and this allows a certain amount of leeway. This is part of the reason why FTL is so acceptable to "purist" science fiction fans - theoretically, there are ways to circumvent relativity, but they're all really complicated, unlikely, and rely too much on "handwavium". But it sounds plausible, because none of us (or, at least, very few of us) are astrophysicists or quantum physicists. The same can be applied to other things - psychokinesis/precognition/clairvoyance/telepathy and other parapsychological and pseudoscientific phenomenon can be explained this way, as long as the method sounds plausible. To make it plausible, it has to sound real - it cannot be perfect; there have to be drawbacks. Slipspace feels "real" because, while it is incredibly convenient, it is not perfect - it takes months to reach anywhere, and is an imprecise art. Disregard the Covenant speed and accuracy - those are a narrative element to enhance the threat posed by the Covenant, and to show the reader/viewer/player that they are more advanced that humanity. But slipspace feels like a science - it has payoffs and drawbacks, just like anything else. It is balanced. TL;DR: try to keep it plausible. Plausible doesn't necessarily mean accurate - it just means that you should put some thought into your fanon, and try to at least keep it science fiction. Handwavium "Handwavium" is when a story simply glosses over inconvenient facts 'completely, not dealing with the at all. Faster than light travel can be subject to this - ways can be found to "circumvent" relativity, such as slipspace/hyperspace, warp fields, worm holes, point-to-point teleportation, and so on. But writers still insist on ignoring all of these, and using traditional if-I just-keep-going-I'll-get-faster drives. This is what is called a "Fakedrive" - its impossible. Handwavium can apply to anything - artificial gravity could almost apply, though Halo deals with this relatively well, showing that there are problems with the technology. Anything that is actually scientifically impossible, but is treated as a normal facet of life, and indeed its absence may be inconcievable to the inhabitants of the story. In fact, little in Halo is really handwavium except perhaps the Halo's themselves, which wipe out sentient life using a "harmonic resonance" - though this is technically technobabble. Unobtainium "Unobtanium" refers to materials that, while ''theoretically possible, are well beyond anything humanity can actually build or refine today, or in the near or even distant future. In science fiction terms, Unobtanium is far more preferable than Handwavium or Technobabble - it explains the story's contents in a believable way, making them seem plausible, but still gives the author room to manoeuvre. Forget Avatar - Unobtanium can refer to any material. While it is never really directly addressed in the Halo Universe, whatever material the Forerunners built their structures out of must be some of the strongest Unobtanium to exist - the Halo rings have been sitting between the gravity wells of a gas giant and its moon, dealing with the tidal stresses of the two interacting gravitational fields, not to mention they also have to deal with the stress of the ring's own rotation. And they've been doing this for a hundred thousand years. They just don't make 'em like they used to, huh? Technobabble "Technobabble" is when a character in the story, or the author, tries to explain away something that would normally be defined as Handwavium with a nonsensical description of the mechanics. A protagonist might, for example, claim that he can stop the Doomsday Machine from activating by "reversing the polarity of the neutron flow" - exactly what this does, whether its possible, or even whether it makes any sense is unimportant. There's really no other explanation for why the protagonist succeeds, and the viewer simply trusts that this is plausible, because it sounds like it is. The explanation behind slipspace might sound like technobabble, but it isn't. It uses micro-black holes to open a quantum hole in space/time that evaporates in a microsecond, travels through Shaw-Fujikawa Space, and performs a similar process to return - this is unobtanium, because it partially sounds scientifically plausible. A more accurate example would be the much-lauded Halo Effect the Forerunners used to sterilise the galaxy - a "harmonic resonance frequency" that targets the cells of sentient organisms. "Harmonic resonance frequency" doesn't actually mean anything - its merely a piece of technobabble that the custodians of the Halo Universe have decided sounds appropriate. Strictly speaking, Technobabble is still better than Handwavium, but its still an irritation to readers who expect the author to have put some effort into the research. It doesn't neccessarily mean the story is bad - we don't, of course, expect a fiction author to be a quantum physicist as well. Originality HaloFanon isn't set in stone, and there is no single concept that MUST be adhered to. Originality is encouraged - if you have an idea for a weapon, ship, character, planet or faction, then by all means, create it and be proud of it! All we ask is that you remember to make it '''original. Plagiarism There is a fine line between inspiration and plagiarism, but new users seem to dance back and forth across that line with gleeful abandon. It is, for example, NOT acceptable to suddenly create an article about the Imperial-Class Star Destroyer on HaloFanon, with the exact same performance as it has in the Star Wars Canon - it is acceptable to use it as the profile image, serving as visual inspiration for your own class of ship, so long as it is not a direct copy-paste. The same rule applies for other series; Star Trek, StarCraft, Stargate, pretty much anything with "star" in the name. Make sure that what you create is original, and doesn't borrow too heavily from other series. If you can, attribute what you do take to where you got it from. And, no, the irony of this section is not lost on me. Stupidity And then, of course, there are concepts so unbelievably flawed that it is hard to pick just one thing about them to nitpick at - the whole things is simply awful, and inspires reactions of fear, anger, and hatred in other members. Most of the time, its merely a simple matter of rewriting a godmodded article; other times, the problem is much more complicated than that. A five-in-one gun that can slice, dice and do julienne all at the same time can be excellently written, but the idea itself is a bad one unless it can be pulled off well. Taking old technologies and making them "new" just counts as a lack of imagination. Saying that the UNSC would recreate the Sherman tank is like saying the United States Army is dropping the F22 Raptor and starting production of the Kitty Hawk - the design was appallingly bad, and it was unpopular with its crews. Why on Earth would the UNSC resurrect the design five hundred years later, when they have far better available to them? And by the same logic, claiming that a faction would manufacture every weapon and ship they used after a five-hundred-year-old video game is ludicrous. StarCraft is not quite that good a game. Using the image as a base to work from can work, and certainly has produced some successes, but making the in-universe explanation for it to be a reverence from the source you got it from? Crossovers You write your story, but you find that you want to make it more interesting - and then you have a thought. Perhaps you watch a video or DVD; or maybe you see a poster; or you read a book you love. And you think: what if... Thus is born the crossover. Perhaps the most varied type of fanfiction, crossovers can be virtually anything; Fanfiction.net has more than a hundred categories, with stories blending Halo characters with those of another universe. Some prove to be spectacular; a complete reimagining of Battlestar Galactice that introduced John and a number of other Spartans, with both sides affecting each other in surprising and fascinating ways. It really is the best crossover fanfic I've read yet. Even some of the Star Wars and StarCraft stories aren't so bad - but then you get...*shudder*...THIS monstrosity. An apparently serious Halo/Twilight crossover. Please don't do this. Please. God-Modding Similarly, try not to god-mod. This is not the same as bending the rules of science - this is blurring the line between what is reasonable and what is not. Your fanon is something you are making an emotional and intellectual investment into. Its a natural reaction to try to make sure that it is better than everything else's. But there's a difference between "better" and "totally ridiculous" that a lot of newer members simply do not see. Say, for example, you create a Spartan character. Let's call this character John/Jane Doe. Naturally, you're very attached to your own character, a Spartan to call your very own, and want them to be best they can be. So you give him shielded armour that makes him faster and stronger than the other Spartans, an incredibly high IQ, and make him immortal, because nothing can kill your creature of perfection. But in the creation process, you have fallen into the great trap of Fanon - you've godmodded your character, making him/her unreasonably overpowered, an unstoppable and, to be perfectly honest, boring juggernaut of destruction. Congratulations. Batten down the hatches for the flaming and rage that will ensue. How do you prevent this? Its simple. It doesn't even need to be a radical change - just a matter of rephrasing. The issue of armour can be resolved by making your Spartan a member of, for example, a secret ONI project for prototype technology. Rather than having a ridiculously high IQ, make them skilled at strategic and tactical warfare - this is a Spartan, after all. And instead of being immortal, instead write that he managed to defy all odds for survival. With a few simple and basic modifications, your character has gone from a godmodded piece of crap to a decent character. By accounting for the attributes you wanted to give them, you've almost accidentally added depth and history to your character. Now, let's take another example - a ship. Naturally, being the artisan that you are, you want it to be the best possible ship in existence - the biggest, fastest, most heavily armed and defended, carrying hundreds of fighters and able to invade a planet. You want, in fact, to create a one-ship fleet. Can you see the problem with this logic? There are contradictions here that you should think about. In space, the lack of friction to slow an object down means that velocity is meaningless - it all comes down to haw quickly a ship can accelerate or decelerate, and a ship with such huge mass is going to have a LOT of momentum, meaning both will be slow. Likewise, its manoeuvrability will suffer, as the thrusters have to push against such a "heavy" ship. At the same time, a huge ship also makes a huge target. Fighters have a finite range, at least in space, and are more often used for defence than attack - likewise, having a ship with a massive amount of guns but no fighter escort leaves it vulnerable. There are different types of ship that fill different roles- is it a battleship or a carrier? A frigate or a destroyer? Each ship class has advantages and disadvantages inherent to their design. Balance is the key. And then, of course, there are the guns people make that can snipe at a thousand meters, spray a Grunt with lead, pick off an Elite at mid-range, and take down a tank with a HE shell - all in the same weapon. If this isn't godmodding, I don't know what is. It has its own template. Go figure. This essentially boils down to a very simple axiom: the golden rule of fanon is, Make it realistic, or not at all. "Friendliness" Canon Friendliness doesn't refer to whether the story is rated for kids or for adults - it refers to how well it is able to interface with existing Canon. A story can be absolutely terrible - appalling content, spelling that would make Shakespeare weep, and characters that have the dimensions of a straight line. But if it doesn't violate any canon facts, then it's "friendly." By the same token, a story written brilliantly can have wonderfully thought out content, characters that are deep and intriguing, and perfect spelling, grammar and syntax, but if canon conflicts with it then it is "Unfriendly." Being Canon Friendly isn't necessarily a good or a bad thing. This is Fanon - we are here to write good stories and create our own background for the Halo Universe. If Halo canon was perfect, we would be out of a job, wouldn't we? Putting a new spin on an existing universe or IP is what has kept the movie industry in business for so long, and it's managed to work occasionally. I could use the new Star Trek movie as an example, but honestly, I'd rather talk about Batman. Batman Begins rebooted a stale and stagnant movie series that had degenerated into George Clooney duking it out with Arnold Schwartzenegger, costumes that looked like they'd been ripped straight out of the seventies show (and a plot to match), villains who spouted campy one-liners as though the script had been written by someone suffering from logorrhoea, and NIPPLES ON THE BATSUIT. Now we have Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale on our screens; the Joker is the most haunting villain I have ever seen; and the mythology of the Batman universe has been turned into a story that is both deep, fantastical, and able to suspend my disbelief through both the original and the sequel. Heck, even the original Tim Burton movie was an effective reboot - rather than the hammed up camp of Adam West and Burt Ward, we had a terrifying story of insanity and redemption starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. People still debate which Joker is better - Nicholson or Ledger. I'm not sure myself. But at the same time, be very careful when you create a reboot. I wasn't bowled over by the first Transformers movie, and refuse to watch the sequel out of wanting to keep my eyesight, but it has resulted in legions of fans rising up in outrage at the abomination Michael Bay has become. While Bay may be a fantastic cinematographer, I question his ability to craft a story that is comprehensible. In Halo terms, there are some examples. For example, trying to create a sequel to Halo 2 resulted in Dragonclaws' lengthy but excellent Halo 3: Ascension, a story far more complex than the actual Halo 3 would eventually turn out to be, and is a fantastic read - I recommend it to anyone interested. But it was rendered incompatible with canon when Ghosts of Onyx and Halo 3 came out, and has probably been further marginalised by later released like Uprising, The Cole Protocol, Helljumpers, Blood Line, Evolutions, and the Halo Legends anime shorts. Style Characters Who Is Mary Sue, And Why Should I Fear Her? There is a name that fanfiction writers the world over know and fear. It is said that at the end of all things, Chuck Norris will say the name and cause all things but himself to end. It is said that Michael Jackson, in his last days, tried to dabble in fanfiction and stumbled across the name - the doctor was too late to prevent the madness, and had to euthanise him for the sake of the world. They say that when somebody utters this name, the dread lord Cthulhu sends his legions of Shoggoths to scour the Earth for the utterer and drag him back to Rl'yeh to spend an eternity in torment as penance. That name is Mary Sue. Mary Sue is perfection incarnate. She is the youngest girl to ever join the UNSC, recruiters obviously too dazzled by her sparkling skin and dreamy eyes to remember the age limits that are a legal requirement; she is immediately, sometimes disconcertingly, well liked by everybody she meets, especially the main canon characters; she has special abilities and "powers" that make her such a force to be reckoned with that legions of enemies flee before her wrath; she dresses only in all the hottest designer labels; she is all but guaranteed to either befriend, seduce, or be adopted by one of the main characters and when she inevitably dies, her passing will be celebrated mourned by all. This is the horror that inexperienced fanfiction writers have unleashed upon teh intarwebs. Contain Protocols are in effect - please remain calm during the duration of this crisis. There are many faces to Mary Sue. The Angsty-Sue, who plays true to her name; the Canon-Sue, the victim of author possession; the villain sue, who is the long-lost little sister of Sephiroth and inherits his Masamune blade; the Gary Stu, the male clone of Mary (or other characters); and the holy grail of Suedom, the much sought-after Parody Sue, a satirical send-up of the genre. The reasons for their occurrences are varied - sometimes, its simply a matter of inexperience, and the writer has no idea that their characters have become eldritch abominations of the literary world. Other times, it is a case of deliberate wish fulfillment, with the writer fulfilling their fantasies by inserting their character into the story and carrying out actions they would like to do, or talking to canon characters they love. Rarely, an author will intentionally create a Mary Sue as a parody of the genre - their positive aspects are enhanced beyond all expectations of realism to emphasise the satire of the much-dreaded literary invention, providing humour. Of course, sometimes humour is present anyway, even if it is unintentional. Stereotypically, Mary Sue stories are written by tween girls with a taste for My Chemical Romance and mixing black and pink clothing - while there are certainly authors out there who fit the mold, this is hardly always the case. Many writers guilty of this aren't even female - males are just as fallible as their female counterparts, perhaps more so. They don't even have to be kids - many an adult has created a shambling monstrosity Mary Sue before realising that their characters are horrifyingly unrealistic and annoying. Mary Sue is the cancer that is killing fanfiction, and all attempts at chemotherapy have failed to eradicate her. Mary Sue is Legion, for She is Many *'Angsty-Sue' Angsty-Sue is the most well-known version of the Sue's and may even be the public face of the stereotype - an Angsty-Sue will spend the entire story lamenting over something tragic in her past. Sometimes, it involves something tragic - either her parents abused her, or she was orphaned at a young age. Or perhaps she was bullied by friends assholes. Perhaps she killed someone, either in self-defence or by accident. Or perhaps she has committed genocide on a galactic scale, and has spent the past hundred thousand years weeping tears of blood. Either way, she needs to get the hell over it, the whiny kid - perhaps she should realise that the universe doesn't care how unfair life is, and that if she wants to make up for it she should stop with the water (or blood) works and do something about it, jeez. *'Anti-Sue' At the other end of the spectrum is a literary device equally despised by authors - the Anti-Sue. The Anti-Sue is the exact and equal opposite of Mary Sue. She is not particularly attractive, nobody actually pays any attention to her, she doesn't have any special powers and spends the story either getting in the way or getting kidnapped, becoming an inconvenient maiden-in-distress. Its astonishing that whatever the feminist movement has tried to accomplish, woman authors still write their characters to be soppy helpless porcelain dolls waiting for a man to come along and get shit done. Its also a little sad. In fact, the Anti-Sue has absolute no redeeming features - in their haste to create a character as far removed from a Sue as possible, the author has accidentally taken their character down another path to be feared - the character has every quality of a Mary Sue, but in negative amounts, and has become so completely uninteresting that the story becomes even more boring, and the character that much more irritated. *'Canon-Sue (v.1)' A Canon-Sue is created when a writer takes a canon character, and modifies them to such an extent that they barely resemble their original incarnations at all. For example, I'm sure that a writer could, and probably has, tried his/her hand at a Battlestar Galactica story, deciding to set it from the point of view of Starbuck. The character already has a tragic past, and spends a good deal of time moping about it - so far, that's not too divergent from the original character. But suddenly she'll discover she can hear music from the future by a band called Linkin Park, and has discovered an odd predilection for mixing black and pink with pale makeup and lipstick. Or worse, she suddenly becomes a cheerful soul and discovers she has magical powers to save the human race, manages to seduce pretty much every man in the fleet, making the human race jealous of each other, and eventually becomes a godlike being when she passes away. *'Canon-Sue (v.2)' The alternative to Canon-Sue is Canon-Sue 2.1 - a character who even in their original incarnation possesses all the hallmarks of a Mary Sue. Now that I think about it, Starbuck seems to have all the major qualities down pat - tragic past? Check. Dead parent/lover? Check, check. Unparalleled beauty? judging from her actress's experiences at conventions, an emphatic check. Magical powers? Check. Period of moping depression? Check. Mysterious death? Double check. Perhaps its a testament to the ability of Katee Sackhoff, the sheer magnetism of the character, and the skill of Ronald D. Moore that I haven't put into these terms before - Starbuck is still a likable character. Let me put it another way. Its no big secret that Eric Nylund's favourite character is Doctor Halsey - she has an IQ of more than two hundred, laments her kidnapping the Spartans as children, and is the only person able to make sense of Forerunner writing and technology. But she is NOT a Mary Sue. She has other traits that manage to balance her character out - she is intelligent, but also arrogant, and unlikable by anyone not involved with the Spartan-II Program. She is unwilling to admit to being wrong. And she doesn't descend into a depression over her actions - she tries to make amends. Her character is balanced. She may have some sue-like traits, but she isn't a complete Mary Sue. *'Gary Stu' For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Gary Stu is that reaction - the male counterpart to Mary, Gary is the most handsome man who has ever graced this good galaxy, and women swoon when he passes by, longing to be held in the warm embrace of his masculine arms; he's killed more Covenant than all the Spartans and ODST's combined, and his enemies whisper his name with fear and respect. Gary is a genius with an IQ level OVER 9000!!1! and is able to dual wield Spartan Lasers because, hey, he's just that godmodded awesome. *'Parody-Sue' Parody-Sue is an oddity - she is intentionally created, as a parody of the genre, as an illustration of what a character should NOT be. Parody Sues invariably end up either dominating the universe with all its inhabitants adoring her as the pinnacle of perfection, or she utterly fails - either because there are too many Mary Sue's fighting her, another original character interferes, or because everyone else realises just how uninteresting a character she really is. If it can be pulled off, the author may be lauded with a round of internet applause - the trick is pulling it off well enough that your audience knows that you don't actually believe what you're writing. And that is quite a trick indeed. For a perfect and extremely effective example of a Parody Sue, check this out. Let the lulz commence. *'Self-Insert Sue' While the Angsty-Sue is the most well-known, the Self-Insert Sue is probably the most widespread. In this, an author writes a story where "they" suddenly appear in the world they are writing in. Halo fanfiction is especially subject to this - here's an actual plot summary from a real fanfic: These Sue's make the fatal mistake of being an idealised version of their writers, carrying out their idea of how they would like to conduct themselves - which is usually over-the-top, improbable, and borrows heavily from the fight scenes of Dragonball Z for some reason. In the example story, the character almost seems a mockery of the genre, and could qualify as a Parody Sue - if the author weren't completely frigging serious. The story plays out as a stereotypical example of a Mary Sue - the character lounges around in his "manshon house," surrounded by a harem of attractive women, and laments that "Man Iam so hamsome its a curse." A general tells him that they need him, because he's their "beast man sic". So Captain Jack jumps in his spaceship and travels 100 times the speed of light, a googolplex times the speed of light, and then "graham's number yotta miles times the speed of light" because lightspeed is "snail slow." Rather than overshooting and emerging out the other side of the universe, they reach the battlefield in a day, and Jack goes to sleep. He gets out of bed, jumps out of his spaceship and "prashooed from space and landed", screaming "DIE ALIENS" and arriving at the base, meeting up with his ex-girlfriend who looks like Angelina Jolie. The two are immediately sent to kill the head alien, and cut a path of destruction through the alien horde, sending them fleeing to their "save base". They duel the head alien, and then Selena/Jolie deals it a lethal blow - then Jack pulls out a nuclear warhead launcher, and killed the aliens. The two end up getting medals, and later have sex. This story has every hallmark of a Self-Insert Sue. 1.) The character is actually named after the author. 2.) Character is very popular among the gender they are interested in. 3.) They are able to perform deeds that nobody else can (googolplex lightspeed? Bitch, please...) 4.) They are feared by their enemies and loved by their allies. 5.) They have an epic fight scene against an original character enemy specifically designed to be killed off. 6.) They hook up with an attractive member of the gender they are interested in at the end, using their rogueish charm. 7.) Everybody lives happily ever after. Sickening, isn't it? *'Villain-Sue' In most respects, the Villain-Sue differs little from a typical Sue - tragic past, magical powers, ease in befriending everyone immediately, wish fulfillment, etc. The Villain-Sue differs in that they have no interest at all in the protagonists - it is the villains that they seek to ingratiate themselves with. A typical Villain-Sue sets out to befriend or seduce the villain/s, becoming the most important person in their lives - usually he/she has a tragic past to justify their actions, but since all other Sue's seem to have something along the same lines it ends up just being an excuse. In the process, they manage to soften the hardest of hearts - Voldemort discovers he has a long-lost daughter, and brings her along with him for some father-daughter bonding as he slaughters thousands; Darth Vader finds another son, who joins him as a Sith Lord and takes the place of Luke; the Prophet of Truth adopts a human child and raises her as his own. Gradually (or not, as the case may be) the villains warm to the Sue, and grow to love him/her, as a parent or as a lover. And their actions redeem the villain in the end - Voldemort breaks down crying for forgiveness; Vader returns to the light side and lives happily ever after; and Truth gives up his campaign of genocide as his "daughter" begs him to to. Your Sue And You (The Dangers of Sympathy vs. Empathy) How Can I Turn From This Horrifying Path? (AKA The Art of Characterisation) http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/LTCharacter.html http://www.writing-world.com/screen/film3.shtml The first stage is to decide whether your character is a Mary Sue - some inexperienced writers automatically assume that anything they do is going to be a Sue, on account of them being inexperienced, and apologise in advance. Nobody is going to want to read a story that the author feels obligated to apologise for, not least where they apologise for a Mary Sue story, and will simply skip it. All of this may be premature - if the character is not a Sue, you have just lost potential readers needlessly. For this, there are a lot of helpful Mary Sue Litmus Tests that can help show you whether your character is a Sue, and can also help you decide what modifications are needed to balance your character better. I recommend this one - you only need to check the boxes rather than print it, and it can be used for a large variety of fiction types. Flexibility is a desirable trait in everything. Let us take, for example, my Original Character Qur'a Morhek. He is the rightful heir of a state on Ketesh, a renowned sword master, and has taken a female under his wing as a protege. He serves the Covenant faithfully, and has no qualms killing human soldiers and Marines - this is a war, after all. Is he a Sue? My first, understandable, instinct is to say "No. No he isn't. How dare you accuse him of such abominable crimes! That's stupid - you're stupid!" My second is to wipe away the foamy froth of zealotry and try to rationalise it. Here, in fact, is a perfect time to employ a handy Litmus Test for demonstrational purposes. I used this one - my character, Qur'a, scored 17, and is safely out of Sue range - an "uber-Sue" requires 71 points. By contrast, good old Enoby, from the most infamous fanfiction ever written, scores a whopping 224 points. You need to engage in characterisation - the art of fleshing out a character , so that they have names, appearances, histories and personalities that are well-rounded, well-developed and believable. Do this, and your story is well on its way to being a good one - fail, and you're left with characters as flat, unempathetic and unlikable as Bella Swan. =Name = http://www.fictionfactor.com/guests/name.html http://www.fictionfactor.com/guests/whatsinaname.html Firstly, you need to decide upon a name. You might be tempted to use your own name - this is already your first mistake. I made it in my Minorca Saga, and I've regretted it. Once you make your character you, the author feels obliged to improve on themselves. And these are the first steps into the labyrinth that is Suedom. Try to pick a name that is at least appropriate for your character - it they are an Elite, this application may prove useful for generating names that follow Elite naming schemes; this site may be much more useful for human names, generating randomly chosen names based on cultural history and gender, etc; and for more "alien" species, such as the Unggoy, Kig-Yar and Mgalekgolo, this site is useful for stringing together Japanese syllables randomly. You can simply pick a name out of the aether, of course, the process I use for most of my Elite names, but if you find this hard then a little bit of help is always welcome. Try not to give names that are totally out of place. Calling an alien Christopher Johnson worked in District 9 because it serves to humanise the alien species, more so than the actual humans, which was the entire point of the film. It is such a rarity that is pulled off so well, but don't expect yourself to be the next Neill Blomkamp. Likewise, calling a human character "Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way" is too long, unlikely to ever actually occur, and is going to be a source of derision. Unless it serves a purpose, try to avoid unneccessary diacritic marks, such as in "Dark'ness" - unless its for phonetic pronunciation, it just looks stupid. I realise that I may be guilty of this, but I stand by it - the construction of the name is important in this respect. Qur'a's own name an invention of my own, based on the word Qur'an (the reason why I keep the apostrophe in "Qur'a"), the Islamic holy text, while his last name, 'Morhekee, was conjured by stringing together random sounds together out loud, using 'Mortumee as a basis. It's almost even a pun on my own self - I try to avoid profanity, and "heck" is the worst I'll say unless I'm really under stress. Thus, we get Qur'a 'Morhekee. In terms of suitability, it isn't inappropriate for a Sangheili - it follows the name conventions, has a similar audible aesthetic, and is sounds suitably foreign. Trying to name the character after myself would produce something along the lines of Myql 'Pomaree - and that is stupid, and therefore rejected. Technically, given the likelihood of cultural shift in the millenia separating the Kaaranese and their Sanghelios brethren, this is still anomalous, but I deal with it by retroactively adding an intermingling of Sanghelios culture on the newer world. Oh lawdy, is dat sum backstory? =Back-story = Any writer needs to know two important things about their character or characters: where they have come from, and where they are going. Where they are is what the story itself deals with - the characters backstory must deal with their past history, and their future aspirations. Fleshing out a character's background is more than just deciding "Qur'a was an Elite dedicated to honour and who came from the Morhek Clan and etc etc yada yada so on and so forth." You need to fix these point as they gain relevance Why is "Sam" dedicated to honour, and what type of honour code does he have? How does being a member of his clan affect his relationships with friends and family? What standing does he have? What does he think of this? You begin to flesh out details about the character that become important to how you view them - Qur'a is not just a member of the Morhek Clan, he is the head of state of an entire nation, a powerful one, and left his considerable duties to serve the Covenant as a simple Ultra because he feared becoming a tyrant and dictator. His dedication to his honour code is fueled by the knowledge of attrocities committed by his ancestors on his own people and others that has brought shame to his nation, and he hoped to restore the honour he percieves as being sullied - he is used to an austere, lonely life as nobility with few friends but many enemies, and relishes the companionship he finds among the Covenant. This honour code is based on utter dedication to the Covenant's Gods, the Forerunners, and he is a deeply religious individual, conflicted by the duality of the Forerunners' peaceful and majestic nature and the brutal annihilation the Covenant heap upon humanity in their name. By fleshing out what has happened to your character, you can begin to piece together what will happen - devastated by the revelation of the falsehood of the Great Journey, he returns to his homeworld to seek spiritual guidance. He finds it, returns to his nation and becomes a great leader, and saving his people from despair by giving them a new religion to revere old gods, retiring from the life of a warrior to become a benign but strong ruler. This is just an example of one path the character may take - he may seek vengeance against the Prophets who lied to his people, against the Brutes who betrayed the Elites and violated his code of honour, abandoning his "destiny" as a ruler of his nation to become a heroic warrior intent on dying in battle. This is the more attractive future for me, personally, but for your characters its all up to you - its your decision. Remember, though, a "happily ever after" can also be a boring ending, so try to keep things interesting. Back story can be dealt with in a number of ways - you may just describe it to a reader in summary, to get the point across. I find this to be a bit too overt, and too blunt. Your character, or others, may refer to it in dialogue or monologue, allowing the reader to piece it together themselves. If a writer can, he or she should try to work it into the main narrative itself so that it has bearing on 'current" events. It may be seen in flashback, or dealt with an an internal reflection by the character. If the back story is going to be relevant to the main story, try not to deal with it right before it becomes relevant - if, say, Qur'a has expertise in bomb-diffusal, don't go into a whole spiel about how he studied in the War Academy on explosives right before they need him to - it ends up looking like a deus ex machina to move the story along, and it looks as though the writer has hastilymodified his character to deal with it. It looks much better if it gets dealt with a few chapters before. If you've read tTerry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men, then you'll understand - Tiffany's back story is her relationship with Granny Aching, and it helps her defeat the Queen of the Elves with nothing but a frying pan and small but fierce Scottish warriors. Her history with Granny Aching is dealt with in flashback, each flashback relevant in some way to the current plot as it procedes, but cumulatively these flashbacks allow the end to happen - without them, it's just a little girl being helped by the ghost of her grandmother. With them, we know the significance it holds to her, and it makes the story truly fantastic. Back-story doesn't just apply to characters - you can also apply the process to objects or factions. Give a weapon or ship you create a history that is interesting and varied - take a look at my UNSC Aeneas article if you'd like/ I've tried to give it a history that is long, varied, and interesting - involved in corporate incompetence, acquired by the military at a bargain price, nearly decommissioned three times before being involved in a special project to modernise it and participating in Operation: HOT GATES. I've applied the principles I've outlined to it, and it's produced an article that is (at least, in my opinion) interesting and gives the inanimate object a personality. Again, this can be applied to a faction you create - my Kaaranese Sangheili has been described by some as "the best foreign-culture article on Halo Fanon", and it is something that I have taken care to make different from what other people were doing but still in keeping with the Sangheili aesthetic. =Appearance = I'd like to claim that I'm a 8'6'' warrior with flexing mandibles and beady eyes, but that would be a lie, and an obvious one. A character needs to be fleshed out, even if they end up as a blank canvas - the Master Chief, as faceless and unemotive as he is, is still a compelling character because he has a personality and a back-story that is well detailed, but more importantly his appearance is perfectly in keeping with it. Bungie couldn't exactly reinvent the wheel when they redesigned the MJOLNIR in Halo 2 - the huge, bulky, green battle armour is the most identifiable asset the Chief has, and makes him as visually recognisable as Mario, Samus Aran, or Solid Snake. A character's appearance needs to be consistent with their back-story and their personality. You can't have the Master Chief sporting an emo fringe, and you can't have the Arbiter wearing baggy pants and an iPod blaring rock and pop music. Each character's appearance needs to be in keeping with how they act, where they are from, what they are and who they are, and breaks from that are jarring and can come across as ridiculous. The aforementioned "My Immortal" goes into considerable detail about black dresses, hot topic shirts and jeans, makeup and lipstick - completely ignoring the fact that Hogwarts, where it is set, has a uniform code. The author was probably an American, and I understand public schools in the US don't usually have uniform codes, and regardless it was an excuse for her to superimpose her ideal of "goffik" subculture, even if her characters did come across as emo instead of goth. But her changes to the characters involve more than just abandoning the school uniform - by making them "goffic" she has completely changed the characterisation of the characters she's using. They're no longer Harry, Hermione, Ron and Draco - they don't look the way they did, and they don't act the way they did. Likewise, any character you create is going to have to stay consistent to whatever you decide they are - you can't have a Marine, and describe their lovely flowery shirt or dress; you can't have a Spartan, and have him or her in a designer suit; and you can't have a member of the Covenant decide they like some article of human clothing, and strut about in designer leather. Appearance is about more than just clothes, though - how they hold themselves, how they carry themselves, how they keep their hair and other aspects of their appearance all contribute. A Spartan is tall, erect, with a military crew-cut hair, regardless of gender. Ignore examples that are otherwise - absolutely canon sources confirm this. This is the military - some special forces units may tolerate non-regulation hair and styles, such as the ODST's or ONI field agents, but for the most part the dress uniform is adhered to strictly. The military is not a fashion parade - they have a serious job, and they take it seriously.. If your Marine has an affinity for black and isn't a Helljumper, I don't want to know about it. More leeway is allowed with civilians - hair length, dress styles, etc, though even here you still have to stay consistent - try to keep running themes, or have a legitimate reason why they are wearing something they otherwise wouldn't. I'd also like to say something about gender stereotypes - not every female character has to look like Tricia Helfer. Women have a range of body types and shapes, and a range of sizes and muscle densities, just like men do - having a woman character who is short may not seem very interesting, or might seem offensive, but its an uncontestable fact that on average women are shorter than men. The average woman has less dense musculature than the average man but that doesn't mean that they're "weaker" in any capacity. The people who are going to be characters in a Halo story aren't going to be "average" by any means, and women in the military work out and keep fit - not to mention all the women I know who could kill me with their pinky without even the benefit of military training. Forget the stereotypes about women being "weak" or "demure" - people are people, and femininity is not inferoir to masculinity. You can also forget the stereotypes about men - we aren't all hulking cavemen, bludgeoning Covenant to death with our clubs, dragging a carcass back home to the cave for the missus. We're also not all misogynistic pigs, James Bond exempted. Remember always that ''people are people, no more and no less''. Society is rapidly coming to realise that gender doesn't play as much of a role today as it used to - men and women share the ability to feel fear and courage, love and hate, strength and weakness. At the same time, "equal" does not mean gender neutral - you can be feminine or masculine and still be a compelling and strong character. =Interactions = The next few questions deal with the romantic nature of my character - since I am neither gay or a furry, these do not apply to me. Qur'a is pretty average - he's not ugly, but his looks have no influence on he story I intend to tell, and his relationship with Juno 'Joralan is purely platonic. I'' certainly do not find the visualisation of him attractive, and the other characters have more pressing concerns. While other attributes can be glossed over as neccessary to the plot, this is perhaps the most difficult hurdle to leap - if the character is more handsome/beautiful than anyone else, everyone falls in love with him/her, and the author spends entire paragraphs describing just how handsome/beautiful they are, you know you've strayed into Sue territory. Hurry back to this side of the border, please, before you're eaten by a Grue. =Your Sue And You = ' . Literary Concepts =Archetype = =Bildungsroman = =Catharsis = =Climax = Anti-climax =Ethos = =Fiction-writing mode = =Hamartia = =Pathos = =Kairosis = =Motif = =Tropes = =Subtext = =Subplot = '''_ Types A longer list can be found here, but there are some characters that are universal, or nearly universal. It doesn't matter if the work is fiction or non-fiction, fanon or canon, comedy, drama, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and so on - at least some of these characters will be in it. Sometimes it is for convenience, or for storytelling effect, or a requirement for the plot. Other times the story will be based around the characters. To an extent, this doesn't matter either - the why becomes unimportant, in the study of the what. *Protagonist *Hero *Main Character *Antagonist/Villain/Opponent *Minor Character *Foil Character *Unseen Character Alignment Another way to classify your character is with the Alignment system. For a more detailed examination of the system, see here - otherwise you're stuck with my rough overview. Essentially, your character will usually fit into one of nine categories, made out of six types - lawful, neutral and evil versions of good, neutral and evil. On a chart, it would look something like this: Most characters or factions possess at least one of these alignments - factions are harder to classify because they encompass a variety of smaller groups, each of which can have their own alignment (ONi vs the UNSC, for example), and especially with the Covenant, with so many species. If you want to know the alignment of a character of yours, then there's a test here. Lawful Good Lawful Good characters act as knights in shining armour in the universes they're involved in, quite literally in some cases, epitomised in Halo by the ancient, wise and now gone Forerunner race. They opposed the Flood's evil taint, and made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure the survival of life in the galaxy, activating the Halo Array. They are the ideals to which the Covenant (misguidedly, but fittingly) aspire to mimic, and they saw these same features in humanity. Neutral Good Chaotic Good Lets face it, the Insurrectionists are not a true force of evil. They have their own motivations for engaging in their warfare (religious, cultural, political, diplomatic, etc), but ultimately they just want to live their lives they way they want to. Mostly, they've been provoked by the ineptitude of the CAA, with matters compounded by the CMA's intervention, and then finally the UNSC taking over the fight for control of Earth's colonies - most Insurrectionists believe the UNSC has become a fascist dictatorship, which in all fairness it is, and try to forge their own way in the universe. Unfortunately, this means leaving both themselves and the UNSC vulnerable to the Covenant. The Insurrectionists don't care much for governments, or at least that of the Unified Earth Government, and just want to be left alone. Lawful Neutral Lawful Neutral serve the established "good" authority, but do so using methods that are, frankly, questionable at best. In a fantasy, a village may be up in arms. While a Lawful Good character might try to negotiate, or a Lawful Evil character might raze the whole village to the ground, a Lawful Neutral character would target the leaders of the "insurrection" for assassination, undermining its infrastructure or support, and then secure it with force. They aren't truly evil - they serve the law, and seek to keep the peace. But the methods they use can be harsh and apathetic. Lawful Neutral is perhaps a good description of the UNSC, but it is a MUCH better fit for ONI in particular - the notorious Office of Naval Intelligence. This is an organisation that is perfectly fine with, taking a few examples at random, kidnapping and brainwashing children, habitually lies to is civilian populace, and is perfectly willing to sacrifice a fully loaded prison ship, plus Elite prisoners of war, to study the Flood. ONI doesn't care what methods it uses, so long as they help the survival of the human race - to that end, the fate of individuals is unimportant when compared to the fate of humanity as a species. Neutral Neutral (True Neutral) True Neutral characters don't take sides. Some may have trouble seeming whether there even are sides. To a Truly Neutral character, impartiality is the key to their strategy for a number of reasons; a.), they see no difference between the involved factions; b.) they see no benefit to intervening; or c.) because they await the outcome of the conflict for their own ends. While the Forerunners themselves were Lawful Good to the extreme, the machines they left behind have taken the path of total neutrality. 343 Guilty Spark considers both humanity and the Covenant a nuisance, spoiling his precious installation, and is only forced to intervene in their conflict by the outbreak of the Flood, a much bigger threat. His only reason for siding with the UNSC is that humans are Reclaimers - other than that, he sees both factions as primitive barbarians waging a petty and insignificant brawl compared to the outbreak of the Flood. I suppose the Huragok are also True Neutral as well - they don't care for either side in the war, and only wish to be left to their own devices. Chaotic Neutral Lawful Evil Lawful Evil is the perfect description of the Covenant, and the Elites especially. They possess a sense of personal honour, and abides by this strictly. Even the Arbiter, before the Great Schism, is the perfect example of a Lawful Evil character - his assault on the Heretics is vicious, merciless, and unquestioning. Even after Guilty Spark raises some doubts, he still has absolutely no qualms about retrieving the Sacred Icon. He only allies with the UNSC when the Covenant attempt to exterminate his species, turning on them swiftly and brutally. Neutral Evil The Flood reminds me most of a Lovecraftian horror; an otherworldly abomination of rotting flesh, tentacles, and shambling monstrosities. At the same time, while the Great Old Ones of Locecraft's Cthulhu Mythos are Chaotic Evil, the Flood is actually Neutral Evil - it has a goal, and and an ideal it wishes to spread. That ideal is itself - the Flood believes itself to be the evolutionary apex, and that by bringing "lesser" beings into itself it is uplifting them to its level, preserving their memories and their deeds until the end of time. The fact that it causes untold amounts of suffering, agony and the extinction of billions of creatures is a minor consideration. The Flood kills because it can, and only when it can - it is cold, calculation, and brilliant. Chaotic Evil "Hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable" describes the Brutes almost perfectly. Most of them really couldn't give a damn about the Great Journey, or even about the Gods they worship - they fight because they love to fight. They tear victims apart, attacking friend and foe alike, and have to struggle to overcome their bestial nature. Their plans are aggressive and bring a devastating hammer-blow down, but lack finesse or coordination, relying on "brute" strength and firepower. Their political structure, such as it is, is constantly being revised as different packs, clans and tribes undergo their own internal power struggles, leaders falling to usurpers, who fall in turn to usurpers of their own. Point of View Round vs Flat Dynamic vs Static Archetypes Non-Fictional Characters Amalgamated Characters Plot Genres Structure Break Rupture Flow Return Narrative Narrative View *First-Person View *First-Person Omniscient *Second-Person View *Third-Person View *Multiple Person View *Alternating Person View Narrative Mode *Stream-of-consciousness voice *Character voice **Unreliable voice *Epistolery voice *Third-person voices **Third-person subjective **Third-person objective **Third-person omniscient Narrative Tense *Past-tense *Present-tense *Future-tense Dialogue Unless you are setting out to write a piece of fanon, rather than fanfiction, you need to understand how to write dialogue. even writing fanon may require the skill, especially if you're planning to blend the two in your work Monologue Interior Monologue "Monologuing" Dialogue Thought =Infoboxes= HaloFanon maintains preset infoboxes, which can be found here, allowing article creators to input specific information that might be cumbersome to phrase in an article. If you wish to use one, simply copy the relevant text over to your article, then fill it in - doing it the other way around can lead to insertion of fanon material onto a template that a lot of people use, and will cause problems - not to mention the fact that it can be interpreted as an act of vandalism. =Thanks= First and foremost, thanks go to Another Poetic Spartan for inspiring me to begin this piece of work - it has since evolved into something lightly different, but his article, Fanon For Teh Noobs, was the spark that kindled the fires of creativity within me. Secondly, further thanks go to Sgt.johnson, for his invaluable help with the Minorca Saga, Matt-256 for proposing the Mandorla Campaign, and The All-knowing Sith'ari for co-creating the War of Vengeance era with me. These experiences proven instrumental in how I dealt with, and continue to deal with, writing, and I thank all of you for it. Lastly, I thank all of the members of HaloFanon who offered feedback, both criticism and praise, on all of my work - without you, I would have no idea how good or bad I am at writing!